Student in the School of International and Public Affairs receives prestigious NIH Fellowship

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded FIU student Francisco Sastre a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award. These fellowships are designed to enhance the racial and ethnic diversity of the biomedical, behavioral and health services research labor force in the United States.

Sastre is a Ph.D. candidate in comparative sociology/anthropology in the School of International and Public Affair’s Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies. His research, “Living Positive: Life in Community Among Puerto Rican Men Living with HIV/AIDS in Boston,” focuses on the development of new approaches in existing models of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.

FIU faculty member Mario De La Rosa and Bart Laws of Tufts University are the sponsors of the fellowship. Sarah Mahler is Sastre’s major professor, while De La Rosa, Maria Aysa-Lastra and Dennis Wiedman are members of his dissertation committee.

The Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies (GSS) is one of four signature departments in the recently launched School of International and Public Affairs in the College of Arts and Sciences. GSS unites the faculties of anthropology, geography and sociology within an innovative program dedicated to exploring challenges of global scope—such as diverse forms of inequality, contested identities, migrations and diasporas, and nature-society relations—that define the contemporary world. The department’s undergraduate and graduate programs emphasize cross-disciplinary perspectives while acknowledging the unique contributions of disciplinary approaches.